Forum:OT Forums
Discussion of Othar's twitter is a fine idea. Corgi and I have been discussing the titles of the forums which right now are the identity numbers for the tweets. This is not self explanatory. I looked into getting things to work with human readable titles. I am presently stumped by my ignorance of wikia ways. So user story first. I want to comment on a particular tweet. * I go to the Othar Twitter forum header. * I am given the option of starting a new topic * I need to input two things ** The tweet identity number ** The human readable title of the forum topic I am then sent to an editing page which: *Has the header information there. *Has a DEFAULTSORT set to Othar, tweet identity number *Has an OT link to the tweet *Is catagorized as an Othar Twitter Alternately I can start add a link from anywhere by adding double bracket OT Forum | tweet number | tweet title un double bracket and be sent to the same editing page. So that's my presentation of what I want there to be. I am looking for help in getting the wikia to do it. I am also looking for help in finding a good safe way to try out and test the experiments. --Rej ¤¤? 04:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC) : Considering you want to assign a wholly arbitrary title to a 140-character entry, I cannot see how this will help in comprehending the tweet any faster than clicking on the formatted link and reading the whole thing. : You could quote the whole tweet which would be an inherent violation of fair use, as it would not be a portion of the work. : I could bust my hump and try to rebuild the template to allow you to put in whatever you feel like, but since we're going to be busy moving the wiki instead, and I don't have the hang of templates, AND I don't see any bluidy point to this, I shall refrain. : Now, if you want to name them for your own reference and make up a list in your userspace linking to the tweet-numbered forum entries, that would seem to accomplish what you feel is needful and still have it relatively publically accessible. But as you're suggesting something which is neither canonical to the work, Foglio-designated or easily agreed upon by enough people to have it universally useful, I cannot support incorporating it into the regular forum. -- Corgi 06:06, 25 July 2009 (UTC) ::Hi Corgi, ::Thanks for your reply. ::The purpose of a title is in selecting the forum. To me all status numbers (3.14 excepted) look alike. ::There is no user meaning in them. Also as I checked all Forum:'s now alphabetize under F''' so a cooler way to sort them would be a benefit also. ::I am not proposing to name the tweets just make it possible for others to do so. Right now all you do is make the name and status number identical by inputing it twice. ::I can understand you not wanting to bust hump over this. If the wiki does move it may be somewhat moot. ::I was looking for knowledge and advice before mucking things up in my own sparky way. Basically I am now curious to see if what I suggested can be done. I've already sold myself on the idea it would be an improvement. I am used to not having other's agree with me. That's what it means to be Rej ¤¤? 00:01, 26 July 2009 (UTC) . ::: There is no consistent way to name the tweets, that is my point. The one unique identifier they all have is the tweet number, from which you can reconstruct the URL (assuming our links were broken) and read the original material. You cross-reference it with the article on the Twitter as a whole, which has a running summary with links, and you can quickly track down pretty much any point in the story so far. It's not whether it can be done, but the point of doing it. If it can't be done in a consistent and logical manner, it's worthless for documentation. ::: The tweets sort in numerical/date order, incidentally. Chronological. -- Corgi 06:11, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::: If the experiment works then the tweets would still sort numerically/Chronologically. Only the names would change. One would have to rely on the creator not to use an "arbitrary" name. The names would have no effect on sort order because default sort would be by tweet id to maintain chronological order. The way I envision it they would sort under Othar and then chronologically. :::: Now that you have forced me to put some thought into it, why did you choose to forum based on individual tweets? Why not just point to the collections the Foglio's put together. This would work for all but the current story. It would also give readable context to the forum comments. --Rej ¤¤? 17:54, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::: Any name given to individual tweets would be arbitrary. There is no system for naming tweets. ::::: As to how they sort, they're already under 'Othar's Twitter'. Why need to put his name into a sort at all? That's redundant. ::::: Why not point to the collected adventures? Because there's no way to point to an individual point in Kaja's archives and she hasn't updated it for nearly half the total collected work so far. It's not just the current story, it's all the way back to before Oslaka. If you want to comment on the work as a whole, then a separate forum page could be started for that (if we don't have one already - I think we do). ::::: I don't think I understand the point you're trying to make. Commenting on new entries as we receive them makes just as much sense (or nonsense) as comments on each individual new page of Agatha's adventures (which don't have titles either). And what do you mean, 'readable context to the forum comments'? That's why the link to the specific tweet is part of the forum page structure. -- Corgi 18:21, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::::: Please don't kill me, Corgi, but I see Rej's point here. It would be easier to have sections called "Paris" or "Empty Europa" instead of just numbers. However, I feel I should point out that this may all be moot if we move and have boards like this. (No, that's not the actual new home. I'm just experimenting with freebies.) ''— m'' (talk) 21:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC) : No, please don't change the template. Organizing by status number the best method and, as Corgi pointed out, we've had people look at it. Maybe there's a way to better automate the file creation, but I haven't looked into that too seriously. (And I have made some good progress on finding a new host, one that will support a phpBB forum!) : By the way, if you ever want to test code, you can do that in your own sandbox or just make a new Template: file. : Edit to add: I should clarify that I want to actively encourage experimentation, especially if it makes a task easier. Just make a copy of the template and work on that. : ''— m''' (talk) 17:06, 25 July 2009 (UTC) ::Hi m, ::Thanks for your reply. ::Changing the template is a risky way to do it which is why I asked about testing. Thanks for your reply. ::I realize that you have a full head of steam headed in another direction. --Rej ¤¤? 00:01, 26 July 2009 (UTC) Partial Progress Okay. I haven't figured out how to implement my user story yet. What I did find was a better twitter url one that displays a full page of tweets with the chosen tween on top. I.E. The page when the chosen tweet was the most recent. I am becoming sparkier about templates in general and still working on the project. Corgi, would it be reasonable to give a ''readable topic name and title to a forum about page of tweets? ;) --Rej ¤¤? 04:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC) : What about making subcategories of Category:Othar's Twitter for each of the labelled adventures so far and sort the forum pages into those? The only catch with that is that Kaja's way behind on getting those caught up, despite having the coded-up tweets ready to go. We can guess where the divisions will be and sort them that way for now, since by the time we move stuff she might get to it. How's that sound? -- Corgi 04:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC) : Oh, and why is the twitter page-display 'better'? (I'm finding the implication that people who are Girl Genius readers, at least, cannot figure out how to parse a URL by themselves with a little experimentation to be able to navigate the Twitter back and forth - hard to swallow.) Is it for context, you mean? -- Corgi 21:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC) :: Exactly. The page display puts the focused tweet on top. It also provides the context of the tweets that came before it. And there is a more button on the bottom for even more context. I couldn't figure out a good way to go past the focused tweet, unfortunately. --Rej ¤¤? 16:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC) ::: I haven't found a way to surf forward either, except by roughhousing with the URL. You can't input a fixed page number either because they keep changing as new tweets accumulate at the one end of the archive. ::: But... again, we don't do this for the pages. Serial entries being equal, I'm still puzzled by your focus. Your energy towards it is admirable, though. -- Corgi 16:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC) :::: Actually the page link works by telling twitter the max id (which is the same thing you input) and telling it the page number (page=1). :::: I am confused by your second paragraph. I'm not sure which pages you are referring to. Nor what you mean by serial entries. The last sentence I agree with. However you could refer to a page in a story. The story would have a final tweet. The pages could be referenced from that tweets id. --Rej ¤¤? 19:17, 31 July 2009 (UTC) Well, GREAT Something's screwed up with the Categories right now - I edited out 'Othar's Twitter' for the subcategory name for all the tweet forums, but the GUI Category editor isn't showing up at the bottom of the Edit window, and the old category name will not be removed. So now it's a mess. -- Corgi 23:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC) : Ia that because of Category: } in Template:Forumheader? Argadi 23:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC) :: Aha, I did fail to go down enough layers. But why did it mess up the sort and put everything under 'F'? to yank that out for now -- Corgi 04:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC) Back to the drawing board Umm. The Othar's Twitter category now contains only this forum. And none of the tweet discussions. Indeed the problem with everything being filed under "F" is radically fixed. Now they are not categorized and will not appear. This does not quite seem to be the improvement that was wanted. ;Thoughts: The preload needs to hardwire in the category and the sort within the category. :A good name for the preload would be Template:Othar's Twitter/Preload :A good name for the forums would be nnnn title. ::The nnnn is the status id number for the tweet. ::The title could be the tweet date or a human understandable title. ::The slash makes the parts separable. ::The category would be Category:Othar's Twitter|Othar, 000nnnn ::: The 000nnnn would be a zero padded form of the status number to assure correct sort order. Hmmm. That's detailed enough I might be able to implement it. Testing in user space first. User:Rej Maddog/tc *You can play with User:Rej Maddog/tc/OT create box **To see preloads from User:Rej Maddog/tc/Othar's Twitter/Preload ::Hint: Use preview but don't save the results. What's the real problem? Othar's Twitter has several pages *A main page Othar's Twitter *A category page Category:Othar's Twitter *And a forum page Forum:Othar's Twitter The last page is linked to by the index. So it's easy to find. On the other hand it is presently empty because all the discussions are in subcategories. '''The discussion forums do not appear in Forum:Othar's Twitter. The strange thing IMO is that the subcategories are not listed on the forum page even though they are categorized as Othar's twitter. So I thought that you couldn't navigate to the individual tweet discussions. Maybe the thing to do is just have the index point to Category:Othar's Twitter instead of the empty forum header? --Rej ¤¤? 01:59, September 10, 2009 (UTC) : After some experimentation I was able to fix Forum:Othar's Twitter. Turned out what it needed was a second forum tag adding the subcategories to its listings. --Rej ¤¤? 02:33, September 17, 2009 (UTC)